Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall verdict on the “dead” claim

  • Many say the 2007 “Microsoft is dead” thesis has aged badly given today’s valuation, profits, and product reach.
  • Others argue it was directionally right for that moment: Microsoft felt like the new IBM—feared less by startups, culturally sidelined in the emerging web and mobile eras.
  • Several commenters reconcile this by saying the old Microsoft (’90s desktop monopoly bully) is dead, but the company was later “resurrected” through a major strategic pivot.

Business performance vs cultural relevance

  • Commenters stress the gap between financial health and mindshare: a company can be hugely profitable yet “zombie-like” or irrelevant to new builders.
  • Comparisons are drawn with IBM and Oracle: still printing money, but not top-of-mind for younger founders.
  • Counterpoint: Microsoft today is far more central than IBM, with multiple strong product lines and real competitive pressure on others.

Products, platforms, and market position

  • Windows desktop share declined from near-total dominance but remains large; phones were a total loss.
  • Windows is seen as a mature cash cow; Azure, cloud-based Office, developer tools, LinkedIn, GitHub, and gaming are framed as the real growth engines.
  • Some see the company as copying rather than leading (e.g., Teams vs Slack, Azure vs earlier clouds), others highlight bold bets in cloud and AI.

Developer and user sentiment

  • Older developers often associate Microsoft stacks with management-heavy, engineer-unfriendly cultures; this stigma is said to persist.
  • Younger developers are viewed as more neutral, given the ubiquity of C# in games, VS Code, GitHub, npm, and TypeScript.
  • Strong criticism of Windows telemetry, privacy defaults, and in-OS “ads”; some users report few issues, others compare unfavorably—and sometimes favorably—to macOS’s own nudges and promos.

Leadership, strategy, and pivots

  • One camp credits later leadership with aggressively pivoting to cloud, open source friendliness (WSL, Linux, Java, Rust), and strategic acquisitions (GitHub, LinkedIn, AI partnerships).
  • Another emphasizes that earlier leadership built the enormous enterprise sales base and cash hoard that made these moves possible.
  • Broader point: once a tech company is very large, outright “death” is rare; slow reinvention or zombification is more typical.